Cookies and a Devil - the full story

A little while later and both finally awoke from the dimension travelings. The carriage moved as if nothing happened before. Outside was some kind of forest to be seen that consisted of only roots and dead trees. The sky was grey. The driver was awake and well. It was as if they just fell asleep
Lucy looked back at the coachman. "Seems the more you do this the less it affects you, huh?" Then she smirked and looked at Artyom while she got a bit closer to her still a bit sleepy looking devil.

"Whats up, lucy? And no. The carriage is just enchanted to knock everything inside out during transport"
"That's weird", she thought about it. "So it sees it as accepted if I step inside, that's clever my runes can't erase an effect dealt with something I accepted."
Why would they do that anyway?
"Mm. Some say to keep the path to Tartarus hidden, other say because the path between yours and my dimension is too good for mortal eyes. I personally think the opposite, that the path is boring as fuck and that it wouldn't be worth looking at it...maybe that's why our driver is so monotone... hm," he finished and looked out, "I asked my sister to meet us by the way. "

"Your sister?", she asked. Thinking about that path. Maybe she could ask Nevio about it. If he really talked to Razlad he must've seen it. He would never use an enchanted carriage. Then she got an idea. "Let's see", she mumbled and took a little glass panel out of her bag. "This should do." She played it on the ground of the coach. With that, she was trying to see if she could figure out the spell. At first, nothing appeared on it. "That means it's not a spell that uses our magic." She looked at Artyom. "Touch it." She smiled at him. "The glass, touch it."

"Mhm," he touched it. Nothing happened

"Hm, not even a slight appearance of red magic." She clearly was a bit disappointed but got over it quickly. "Well, I will have other opportunities to look at the magic of this dimension. It seemed so familiar to me, the first time I saw you use it. It's like runes, but at the same time totally different." Her eyes were filled with curiosity.
"Close. We first used pentagrams and then code. " the carriage stopped at the outskirts of a big city. A bit bigger than manehatten even. The driver was like, "thank you for driving with devilline. don't sue us if your stuff went missing. " then she stepped off the carriage and opened the doors to let the two ponies out, they did and soon saw another mare with a big shield over her head looking at them. The shield 'brother + guest, yo'
The mare was colorful like a normal pony except her thin tail and two horns

Artyom began to walk over to her.
Lucy clapped with her hooves and her briefcase appeared right beside her. Then she said to the devil that just now wanted to bring her the case "That saves you a bit of time. Thank you for bringing us here."

Then she followed Artyom.
The other devil noticed Artyom and threw the shield away before grinning and running, "Artyom!" she tackles hugged him

Wow any faster and she would've knocked him off his hooves<, she thought laughing internally.
"Zahra," said the devil with a nod and pointed at Lucy, "meet my marefriend lucy."
"Hey, Sahra", she smiled, his sister looked nice.

Sahra smiled back and got off Artyom and instead hugged the new pone
Lucy laughed and was glad that Sahra didn't have the chance to take a run up before she hugged her. She hugged back.
Then sahra let go, "now let's get you two to Artyom's place. I kept your place clean, bro. And then we can enjoy the rest of the weekend before Artyom has to roll into work again."
Lucy nodded and grabbed her stuff. Then she thought about something. "Sahra do you like cookies?"
"Yesssssssss" she squealed.
"Let's get to Artyom's place and make some cookies for him and us", she smiled.
"Ok." They started to walk toward the town, "by the way, Artyom. Greetings from mom" Artyom blew a raspberry at that.

Maybe they don't get along pretty well<, she thought and just walked alongside Artyom and his sister while looking around.
The town they entered was much like one on earth. After an hour of walking and seeing pony devils and other races as devils. They finally entered an apartment building and moved up.
There was not much to do or say in the building and then they entered Artyom's room
His flat
It had a living room with some electronics, an office and two bedrooms alongside the kitchen plus bath.
"That's my home..." said Artyom and went to his room
"You two have fun"
"Do you think there is flour and everything here?", she asked Sahra. "If not I always have some spare flour and butter", she smiled.
She clicked her tongue and said, "I was house sitter here. I bought ingredients a few days ago. Just come on in in the kitchen"
She followed her. "I'm curious if you will like it. Have you ever heard of cookie magic?"
"Nope"
"What types of magic are there in your world?", she asked while she took a few extra ingredients out of her bags.
The devil made sighed out and said, "at the core. All are same except those in the military. They can overrule the magic of us common folk.”
Lucy smiled. "Well, at least there are not over eighteen different types of magic. I want to show you something." She took out a little black bag. "These are powdered crystals. Dip the tip of your hoof in and try tasting it." She opened the bag. "It's pure energy," Lucy remembered her first try of that ingredient. It tasted very ticklish almost like overly fizzy soda drinks.
"Okay," said the other mare and dipped her tail in it before putting a bit in her mouth. Chewing. She said, "tasty"
Good she's not reacting in any funny way it should be okay<, she thought. "Well then we can take it to bake "Runecookies" and with this new recipe, even a devil should be able to feel the nice rush of energy from them. You see the first time I offered Artyom one of my cookies he didn't feel a thing, but I learned about runes that even devils can feel, so now let's make some 'Devilrune cookies'. What do you think about that name for them?"
"Devils don't use runes that much. How about 'doom'cookies ?" Sahra said while tapping her chin.

"Yeah, why not", she chuckled and wrote the name over the recipe. "So at first, we make normal cookie batter. After that, I need a pot to make liquid energy or liquid magic is how you could call it, also. Then we put the cookies on a tray and then we can fill the cookies with the liquid magic." As soon as they had all the stuff, they needed, Lucy started to make the cookie batter. "If you want you can already get a pot of water boiling."
"On it" Zahra got a pot from somewhere and boiled water
"Whats next"
"When it's boiling you can just add the whole bag of that blue powder into there.", she said. "In the meantime help me here." She took the batter out of the bowl and started to make a few small balls. "We need a tray or whatever goes into the oven to put the cookies on. You can help me shape the cookies."
The devil nodded and used her magic to ake little balls like lucy
"Now this will be something really fun", she said as the water started boiling. "Take this little bag of powder and pour it all in there."
"Yo," she said and took the bag with her own tail. Putting the contents into the hot water
The water first turned bright blue as the crystal powder hit the water, but then Lucy took another crystal out of her bag. It was pitch black. "Now this", she said and put it in. The blue water instantly turned black. "Now turn the flames off so it cools a slight bit. We'll make our last few cookie balls here and when we're finished I'll show you what that black energy does."
The devil nodded and turned off te heat
It cooled down rather quickly now looking like black ink. "Now I'll take this ...", she showed Sahra a small pencil, "and take a bit of the black energy and then draw this sign here." As she drew the sign the cookie changed from a ball into a flat cookie as soon as the cookie was flattened the symbol disappeared. "Now you try", she gave her the pencil and showed her the symbol and how she can draw it onto the cookie.
"Hmm" the devil signed the cookie with the symbol but for fun added some hearts
The cookie did something interesting. It got flat, but suddenly it changed its shape, it was now heartshaped. "Nice, you're already bringin' in your own style", she laughed. "Be careful though runes follow very special rules. If you would've drawn the hearts directly over the rune it could've exploded or something like that."
"I see. So what is the cookie supposed to do now ?"
"Well let me finish the rune infusion real fast, I'll tell you while they bake." She grabbed another pencil and dipped it into the black energy. Then her eyes started to glow and in a matter of seconds, she had finished all four cookie trays. "Now we put them in on °C for about minutes", she said.
"Uch. Okay." They did just that and all other steps until the table was full of trays with cookies
For as long as the last cookie patch was baking she told her about cookie magic. "Well, you see. I'm an earth pony, right? So I shouldn't be able to use magic at all. But runes give me the means to use magic even as an earth pony. These cookies have runes infused, so I can crumble them to set the energy free or eat them to get special effects on my or anyone's body."
"Seems legit."
She smiled. "The ones we have here are not for combat though they are for a good time together. The magic-infused in there isn't strong enough to make magical spells or anything like that, but it's enough to make a nice fizzy, slightly fuzzy feeling when you eat them. They are for fun." Then she took out the last batch. "Except these ones. They are indeed powerful enough to build very powerful spells with them. I want you to have them. It's a very special kind and I think they may help you someday. Oh, they also don't go bad."
"Oh thank you!" She happily said and put the cookies on a plate in the fridge. "I wonder what Artyom is doing"
"Should we go and see what he's doing?", she asked smirking while she said it.
"Artyom? Whatcha doing?"
Asked his sister as she made her way to his room.
Artyom was asleep again. His familiar bed doing this to him
"Cute, is he always that tired?", Lucy chuckled and returned to the kitchen to clean the things they used.
"Yeah. He probably would have slept through his birth if that process wasn't painful," Zahra whispered and sat beside Artyom on the bed, "he did not tell me much about you though."
"You can ask me everything you want", Lucy said with a smile.
She brushes his mane a bit and then joined Lucy in the kitchen, "he said you two met in a church"
"Well yeah, at first I thought it was really weird to see a devil in a church, but now I know he's different from our devils."
"Oh? How so?"
"Well our devils would start to burn if they get near a church", she explained.
"How silly" she chuckled.
"Well yeah, our devils are all fallen angles and they are kind of allergic to everything holy."
"Maybe that's why. We are devils through. We also have some angels around and.." she stopped and then smiled, "that'd be a surprise"
She looked back at the sleeping devil, "a surprise for all"
"What would be a surprise?", Lucy asked.
"You will see tomorrow when our mother comes to visit" she grinned slightly but then frowned again, " I better leave now. My cat is probably hungry and I still have to finish my studies" she lets out a sigh and leaves
"Oh okay, see ya." >Hopefully I didn't say anything stupid<, she thought while she went to the bedroom.
Artyom was still asleep and covered in his old bedsheets, dreaming of the past probably. It was still lunchtime though
Lucy snuggled right beside him and stroked his mane. "Sweetie, are you really that tired?", she asked. "Silly, devil." Her hoof wandered down to his crotch. "I wonder if you would like me to wake you up like this."
He turned his back to her. Not wanting to interrupt his innocent dream with a boner
"Well if you don't want to then I'll just sit here with you and wait. Maybe I could try the thing uncle Nevio told me", she said more to herself than to him. She sat down on the bed and closed her eyes. >Now think of a place you would love to be in, just like uncle said and relax<, as soon as she said relax her body took it like a command and she could feel her muscles just relax. Soon she had reached the state Nevio described. She was sitting in the middle of a grass field. It was the middle of the night and the full moon shone bright right into her face. >He was right I could sit here for an eternity<, her thoughts slowed down a bit and she just embraced the nice relaxing feeling of going deeper into this state and relaxing.
Artyom was dreaming about eating living changelings like a puppy about bones
Changelings*

This is really relaxing<, she thought but what was even more relaxing was, that she could hear and feel Artyom's heartbeat in this state. When she focused enough she could even feel the single streams of air in the room, how they slowly flew over and against her fur. All of this Artyom's heartbeat, the slowly moving streams of air and the few random sounds every now and then brought her deeper into this state and she lost all feeling for time, as she just enjoyed being in this wonderful relaxing state.
Artyom just ripped the head off of a changeling.

Suddenly Lucy had an idea. >Maybe this works<, she thought. She got ready to stand up again. Taking a deep breath to find back to reality and by the time she felt **completely awake** again, she stood up and took a cookie out of the still hot batch she and Artyom's sister had made a few minutes back.

"Let's see if he's hungry", she smirked and brought the cookie back with her. Then she positioned it right in front of him.
"Cha cha angling" Artyom licked the cookie
Lucy blushed and couldn't handle it anymore. "By Celestia, why do you have to be so damn cute."
minutes before the sun was supposed to set. An alarm went off, waking up all in the room
"I didn't even see that clock before it went off", she said looking at Artyom.
Artyom yawned, "oh yes. I wanted to show you something. "
"Good thing that Zahra set that up"
"Set up what?", she asked curiously.
"The alarm, duh. Anyway, let's get out and I show you the special 'sunset' in Tartarus"
"Okay, I'm curious", she said and followed him.
Once out, they sat on a bench. Soon the orange sky of Tartarus changed into the purple dusk of twilight. Something peculiar could be seen at the side of the horizon. Instead of a normal round ball planet, the city lied on the insides of a giant ring. Next the sun, it did not move, it just went paler and slowly loosed some light, a giant mechanical object was there and it changed from sun plates to moon plates. Around in the sky were other ring planets visible, including the one they were on now, there were 7 at total.
"Welcome to the seven rings of Tartarus"
Lucy looked around clearly shocked and amazed at what she saw. "Wait is these... are these all rings? What's between them? Are there bridges? Is that a mechanical sun and moon and ... " she turned around to Artyom and looked at him. "I ... want ... to ... see ... EVERYTHING!"